


measure your life

by theseerasures



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-15 23:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 10,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1323370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseerasures/pseuds/theseerasures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...in love. Moments in the lives of Elsa, Anna, and Kristoff, before and after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. and we can keep on (being lonely)

It had started with a muted disagreement over dinner—Anna had asked if she could be allowed to go on the voyage across the sea, to Weselton, her father had said no, and the conversation had escalated until:

"What are you going to do? Are you going to lock me in my room like you did with Elsa?"

The sudden silence rings sharply in the deserted dining hall.

"Anna," her mother says, voice quiet and measured.

It’s a plea for restraint, but Anna doesn’t care—she’s never wanted anyone to _hurt_  quite like she does now. ”Yeah, I figured out what happened. She did something bad, right? So you shut her away, to punish her.” She’s been thinking about this for years, and all the pieces fit—Elsa wouldn’t have just left her overnight, it  _couldn’t_  have been her idea. Her voice cracks, and the anger worms away, replaced by a desperate  _something_  that she can’t quite describe. "But I don’t understand—why can’t you just— _forgive her_? She’s your daughter.”

 _I am, too_ , Anna doesn’t say,  _I’m your daughter too—don’t you want us to know each other? Don’t you want this family to be together?_

"Why won’t you—"

Her father slams down a fork, his face a strange mixture of anger and helplessness. “That’s  _enough_. Elsa is performing her duties as heir to the throne, and I expect you to—”

But Anna is done. “ _You don’t care about this family!_ " she shouts, and runs from the table, ignoring her mother’s call.

In her room, she grabs the old dolls and crawls under her bed on a whim. “I don’t understand,” she whispers to the Elsa-doll, her breath hitching. ”I just  _don’t_ understand. Why won’t anyone explain?”

There’s no response; she is fourteen years old and talking to a doll. She throws them back into the closet and lays on the floor of her room. The patterns on the ceiling begin to blur, so she squeezes her eyes shut, ignoring the prick of tears.

She watches from a hidden doorway when her parents take their leave. Elsa curtsies carefully, the picture of poise; Anna tugs on the white streak of her hair, and waits for the emptiness to pass.


	2. may your limits be unknown

Elsa’s trying to make some snow—she knows she’s not supposed to, but she wants to see if maybe she can make it happen  _just a little_ _, instead of all at once_ —when she hears the noise outside her door.

She stifles a sigh. It has to be Anna—her visits have stopped happening so much recently, but no one else would be up this early.

The door rattles a little, and there’s a quiet, shuddering breath. “You’re my sister,” Anna says through the keyhole, and her voice is different—when did her voice change? When will her voice become a stranger’s? “I don’t care if you’re real or not.”

A choked noise comes out of Elsa’s mouth before she can stop it, and the snow rushes out of her hand in a torrent.

On the other side of the door, Anna whispers, again: “You’re my sister.”

There’s a long,  _long_  pause that hovers in the stale, cold room; then she hears the receding patter of Anna’s footsteps, and slowly, carefully sinks onto the floor, willing herself to conceal, to be silent.

The snowflakes slow, and suspend themselves in the air.


	3. till the sun strikes through the room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anon on tumblr, who asked for young Anna and Elsa and got...not that.

They try to smooth over things after everything melts, but explaining to the (mostly indifferent) subjects that their new queen has magical powers and had run away and now come back and that Arendelle was opening its borders after almost fifteen years of isolation is difficult work. Anna looks tired and the boy with her ( _Kristoff_ , Elsa remembers vaguely) looks tired, and Elsa  _feels_  tiredness clinging to her bones, so after a while she motions for Kai to take over and they make their exit.

Anna starts talking immediately after they leave the great hall, and doesn’t stop; Kristoff rolls his eyes and keeps trying to interject, but Anna talks right over him without stopping. Elsa just smiles and leads them along—after years of silence, she doesn’t mind the chatter. She doesn’t mind at all.

There is something, though, that she should check—“Anna,” Elsa says, and Anna falls silent instantly. Kristoff snorts. “Are you cold?”

Anna shakes her head. “No, it’s—it’s summer.”

Elsa stops, and Anna stops. They look at each other, and Elsa feels her grin growing with Anna’s. “It is,” she agrees.

Kristoff stares at the two of them, and then throws his hands up, mumbling about how weirdness is definitely genetic and how he needs to find Sven. Elsa raises an eyebrow at his retreating back, and then looks back at Anna:  _how long have you known this one?_

Anna shrugs, and Elsa knows it means  _long enough_.

They’re going to need to have a talk, she knows, and soon—about Kristoff, about Hans, about them and the years that had cut them in two. But now Elsa just enjoys the silent communication between them, and marvels at how easily some things return.

Anna starts talking immediately after they start walking again, but breaks off with a gasp when they reach their destination—a small rise on the side of the castle. “It’s beautiful,” she says, gazing at the sea below.

Elsa opens her mouth to reply, but Kristoff reappears at the moment, a reindeer in tow, and stands at the edge with them. “Has she finally stopped babbling?” He stage whispers, after a while.

An indignant squeal from Anna as she launches herself at Kristoff, and he laughs. Elsa lets them scuffle for a while, and then points at the sky, where a full moon was rising; they both stop to look.

"The sky’s awake," Elsa says, and  _concentrates_.

Anna stares at the snowflake dancing on the palm of Elsa’s outstretched hand, and then at Elsa; her laughter is a mixture of wonder and delight that stretches back and back, to when they were both children.

Elsa hums a familiar tune, and then sends a shower of snow right in Anna’s face.

 


	4. won't just buy you a rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Rachel, who prompted "lace, glasses, rain" and got unmitigated Kristanna fluff.

Anna hates the rain.

That’s probably unfair of her, but rain is just  _so annoying_. It’s not snow, and it’s not…that other thing (sun? air?), it just falls from the sky and gets people wet. It doesn’t have  _conviction_.

This kind of rain is the worst, because it’s the kind that’s cold, and drizzly, and clings to your skin—the kind that never stops. It’s the kind of rain that can never make up its mind ( _conviction_ ) about if it’s even rain or just really enthusiastic fog.

It’s the kind of rain that traps her in the castle for  _days_ , until—

She’s trying on dresses.

Anna doesn’t really  _care_  about dresses, but it’s the third day of random drizzle, now; she’s pretty sure that she’s talked to every one of the new staff people that Elsa hired after the gates opened, she’s tired of hanging out in the barn, and she’s given up on teaching Olaf chess.

(On the second day, she’d gone to the gallery room, but she hadn’t talked to the people in the paintings, because—she doesn’t know. It doesn’t feel right, anymore.)

The point is that she’s so  _very very_ bored, and hey, dresses! They exist. They look nice.

Her pinkie is stuck in one of the back knots.

Anna doesn’t even know how that pinkie got there, okay, she just knows that the lace is trapping it, and it’s not coming out at all, and this has to be the rain’s fault.

She lets out a small yell of frustration as she tugs on the knot again; then she loses her balance and lands hard on the floor—how does that  _happen_ , she’s pretty sure Elsa can put on a stupid dress without—

The door bursts open, and Kristoff rushes in.

"Anna? I heard a noise, are you—why are you on the floor?"

"I’m okay," Anna grumbles, pushing herself up, "My finger got stuck in the dress—it’s still stuck, and—are you wearing _glasses_?”

He is. They’re square, and large, and they’re on his face.

Kristoff flushes, but covers it up with a huff as he helps her stand. His hands immediately reach for the knot behind her back. “You’re a disaster.”

"Yeah," Anna agrees, "I’m great. Why are you wearing glasses?"

"I just…" he trails off, "There, you’re good."

Anna snatches her hand from behind her back, wriggles it. “Wow, that’s—thanks! Why are you wearing glasses?”

They’re awfully close to each other, but she doesn’t want to move away, and—there’s a weird feeling in her pit of the stomach.

Kristoff blushes, again. “I just wear them, sometimes. They help me read easier. Do they look that bad?”

"No," she says, immediately and full of conviction. "They’re weird, but—they’re good weird. I like them."

She smiles at him, and he smiles back, and—they’re still too close. Anna thinks that maybe one of them should say something, or take a step back, but—

"Hey."

She said that. That’s her mouth making noises. “I’m going to kiss  _you_  this time.”

Kristoff’s small smile blooms into a full grin, and he meets Anna halfway.

Rain is okay, Anna thinks, vaguely. Rain is probably fine.

 


	5. bend through alleys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same prompt as the previous chapter, but with a sad bent.

"Anna, it’s time for—what are you wearing?"

Anna peers at her father underneath the heavy makeshift glasses she’d made for herself. “I’m  _Elsa_ ,” she says, pertly. “And I’m wearing glasses because I read a lot in my room, alone.”

It’s an old game, she’s been playing it for seven years.  _I’m Elsa, I do this_! She won’t forget; at night as Gerda unties her lace ribbons she whispers a prayer _Elsa my sister Elsa she has blue eyes and pretty hair she’s fifteen years old now her birthday is in July Elsa my sister Elsa Elsa Elsa._

The things she knows, she’ll carve into the castle walls, and if Elsa changes, Anna will change with her.

"Elsa doesn’t—" her father stops, and breathes slowly through his nose. "You don’t think you’re getting too old for this game?"

"Play it with me," Anna says, taking her glasses off—so Elsa doesn’t wear glasses, it’s one more thing she knows. "I’m going to be Princess Elsa—"

"—Anna, I don’t—"

"—and  _you’re_  going to be the prince who rescues me from the trolls, who’ve trapped her in a scary castle and left her to rot!”

Papa stares at her. “Anna,” he says, quietly.

There are words hidden under her name; she knows— _she’s old enough—_ but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care. “Rescue me,” Anna insists. “Take me out of the castle!”

Papa just looks at her, and she thinks that he might shatter.

Anna thinks of frozen things, and in a flash remembers  _you’reokayAnnaIgotyou_

Then the memory is gone. Her father stands up. “You’re too old for this game,” he says again, voice shaking.

He walks away.

Anna stares out of the window at the cloudless sky and wishes for rain.


	6. standing on stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Rachel, whose prompt this time was "scars, apples, sunshine."

"Oh."

Kristoff jerks his head up; next to him, Anna mutters in her sleep and turns over. “Elsa! I mean. Hi.”

Elsa smiles in response, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Hi. What are you two doing here?”

"Huh? Oh." He glances around at the great hall before replying. "Anna wanted to catch a star shower, but, uh…she fell asleep."

"Of course she did."

"Yeah, well…" Kristoff grins, but feels it fade as he looks at Elsa again.

They all have good days and bad days; he  _knows_  that Anna has nightmares, and sometimes he wakes up clinging to a pillow for dear life because in his dream Anna’d turned cold and heavy in his arms before falling away.

Kristoff doesn’t know if Elsa dreams, but sometimes he catches her staring at her hands for too long. Sometimes he sees her looking at random things in the castle like she doesn’t recognize them at all, and sometimes—like right now—she just looks like…

Like she can just fade into the walls. A ghost.

"Right," Elsa says, breaking into his thoughts, "I’ll leave you two to. Um."

Kristoff watches as she turns around. It’s usually Anna who cheers Elsa up, but Anna’s sleeping.

"Wait, hey."

He’s sweating already; how does Anna  _do_  this?

"Sit with us? We can watch the sunrise."

Cool. He’ll be cool.

Elsa hesitates, but sits down, and Kristoff instantly regrets everything—he doesn’t  _dislike_  Elsa, okay, it’s just that she’s the queen and before they’ve always had Anna as a buffer and any moment now he’s going to bring up the ice thing, it’s not his fault, ice is his life—

"So…your ice magic."

Elsa raises an eyebrow.

He hates himself, definitely, but now the words are out of his mouth. “How does it work? I mean. Where does all the ice come from? Does it come from—from the air? How does that ice dress work? I mean, not that I want—does it affect you? Your ice? Would it hurt if—”

"My magic doesn’t hurt me," Elsa interrupts, the ghost of a smirk on her face.

"Right," Kristoff says, hurriedly. He’s just—he’s going to stop, they’re going to sit in silence.

"So if—if you accidentally froze your hand—"

"My hand would be fine."

Kristoff stares; something about Elsa’s expression and the sure way she says it makes him think that she might have…he doesn’t know.

"No," Elsa continues, staring out the window, "the only visible damage my magic has done has always been on…"

She trails off, and then swallows, hard. “I don’t have a single scar on me.”

Kristoff thinks of Anna and her single streak of white hair, of how she used to play with it when she was nervous—does she miss it? It’d been a part of her for so long.

Thinking about Anna with white hair makes his stomach clench, though, so he plows on ahead. “You never got injured at all? Even as a kid? You must have—fallen off of things or horses or trees—”

Elsa shakes her head. “Even before I—left, I didn’t go outside much, and after…my room was—safe. It was safe. There might have been some bruises, but I don’t—” she makes a self-deprecating sound, “I don’t think I’ve ever even climbed a tree.”

He frowns as Elsa slowly curls in on herself, like she can’t get warm; that doesn’t make any sense, the cold doesn’t bother Elsa, she just said so, but…

Kristoff wonders, sometimes.

He looks at Anna, snoring nearby. It’s weird; he remembers how easily she’d decided to just climb the entire North Mountain to see Elsa, and how easily she’d just—thrown herself off, with only a  _catch!_

He glances back at Elsa, whose arms are still tightly wrapped around her torso like she’s afraid of falling—

"Let’s go fix that."

Wait, what?

Elsa stares at him as he throws caution to the wind and— _what is wrong with him_ , this is all Anna’s fault—grabs her hand, pulling her toward the doors of the castle. “Come on. Come on!”

For a second, she pulls back, something incomprehensible flashing across her eyes—then she laughs, softly, and follows.

* * *

"Okay, here’s the deal," Kristoff says, once they’re in the courtyard. "You’re going to pick out your favorite apple from the trees, and then you’re going to climb the tree and get it."

Elsa looks at him, somehow even smaller now that they’re outside. “They’re all—it’s still summer. These apples won’t be ripe for months.”

For some reason, the way she says that makes Kristoff’s chest hurt, but he pushes it aside. “So? I didn’t say pick the best apple. I said pick your  _favorite_.”

She’s still staring at him like he’s pushed her world off its axis. “I—”

Kristoff thinks of Anna, and what she’d do. ”C’mon,” he prods, again, “Pick your favorite apple.”

He watches as Elsa finally tears her gaze away from him and toward the trees, watches as the stiff line in her shoulders relaxes, watches as she breathes, and just lets herself  _be_.

He watches as she lifts a hand, and—okay, he knows magic, he’s lived with trolls, but this is  _ice_ —sends a large snowflake to the top of one of the trees.

"That one," Elsa says, and her eyes are alive.

* * *

"I look ridiculous."

Kristoff grins. He’s never seen Elsa like this—there’s nothing royal about her when she’s hoisting herself carefully up an apple tree, she just looks…young. It reminds him of how sometimes sunshine hits an ice block in  _just_  the right way and causes a burst of color.

(It reminds him of Anna, too, but well—what doesn’t these days?)

Aloud, he says, “I wouldn’t put my foot there unless you want a broken neck. Go for the one on your left.”

She huffs, and grabs the one he points to instead. “Please tell me that I’m getting close.”

Kristoff looks at the snowflake floating ten feet above where she is. “You could have picked an apple that was closer to the ground,” he replies, before noticing abruptly that the branch that Elsa’s standing on is—

"Don’t put your foot there!"

* * *

(“This is going to scar, Your Majesty,” the Court Physicians says as he looks at Elsa’s arm at breakfast, but Elsa waves him away, mouth twisting upward as she meets Kristoff’s gaze.

Kristoff smiles back.)


	7. this is not our fate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Kasturi, who asked for Jacob Clifton-inspired Battlestar Galactica fusion. It was very confusing.

"Kore, Actual. Wave off!"

"Kore!"

She wakes to howling winds, Leoben’s words echoing in her ears.  _Would you like to say goodbye?_

"Kore, Actual! You’re losing altitude. Hard-line in 60 seconds!"

Her hand hovers over the ejection. One click, and she can get out of this like she’s gotten out of so many others, and then what? Another day, another raid; watching the clock count down.  _Maybe this time. Maybe this time_.

Oaths and promises.

_Would you like to say goodbye?_

Her hand hovers over the ejection, and she does not press down.

"Elsa!"

Anna’s voice, out in the black. Safe. “Elsa, wake up!”

"Anna?" Her voice sounds like a rusted hinge, but she can speak. She speaks. "Anna, I see it. I see—"

"Elsa, there’s  _no_  Raider,” her sister says. If she closes her eyes she can picture Anna’s face right now: tears threatening to spill over, biting her bottom lip ferociously,  _furious_. “Elsa, please,  _please_ —”

"You’re not supposed to call me that," she interrupts. Kore, Kore, Kore; you have a destiny.

"I don’t  _care_ ,” Anna bursts out, “I don’t  _care_  about your stupid nicknames and your stupid Viper pilot traditions—you’ve never liked your callsign I  _know_  you never—”

"It doesn’t matter," she replies, eyes closing and—she’s so tired. "Anna, I see it. I see it. Please—"

_Would you like to say goodbye?_

"Let me go," she finally whispers. Begs.

“ _No,_ " the word like a loaded gun. " _No,_ I’ll  _never_ —I won’t let you. I won’t let you. Come back to me. Come home. Come  _home_.”

She opens her eyes.

Leoben is there again. “It’s time to go,” he says. Gently. “Your destiny—”

But Elsa looks at him. Remembers New Caprica, all of a sudden, how he’d come back, and come back, even though she tried, she  _fought_ —

Remembers his blood, under her nails.

_Come home._  The thought suddenly beats a tattoo in her chest.  _Come home_.

(New Caprica, before, before: they’d gone stargazing, and Anna had pointed at the night sky, charted the stars. “Home,” she’d said, pointing at the  _Galactica_.)

Her hand drifts back toward the ejection, and he frowns.

"I am not Leoben," he says, "I am your guide, between life and death—"

Elsa smiles. “I don’t care,” she says.

She pushes down, and feels her world fly free.  _Catch me_ , she thinks.

Anna does.


	8. let life roll off your backs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anon on tumblr, who wanted Kristoff treating Elsa like a big sister.

"Ow!"

"Stay  _still_ , Kristoff,” Elsa says, sounding wholly unsympathetic as she continues to wipe at the deep scratch on his left arm.

Behind her, Anna flashes him a sympathetic grin, still poking gingerly at her freshly-bandaged forehead. Kristoff scowls; it’s not fair  _she_ got to go first. ”I thought I was,” he mumbles, and then decides to chance a look up, “Are you…mad?”

Elsa pauses, staring at the cloth in her hand like it’s a particularly difficult chess puzzle. “No,” she says, before pressing down just a  _tad_  too hard onto his wound. He makes a sound that is decidedly not a manly bellow. “There, now we can wrap this up.”

Kristoff groans, sure that this has to be punishment. It’s not  _his_  fault that Anna had wanted to go on a three-person sled ride, okay; it’s not  _his_  fault that wolves decide to attack literally  _every time_  they go anywhere; and it’s certainly not his fault that Elsa—

Elsa, he realizes suddenly, is still wearing her riding gloves.

"I just wonder," she says now, the picture of regal serenity, "If His Royal Highness, Prince Consort of Arendelle, Ice Master and Deliverer—"

Anna does a celebratory kind of wiggle— _official titles_!—but Kristoff just grimaces, because this sentence can’t be going anywhere good.

"I  _wonder_ ,” Elsa says, gripping his arm even tighter now, “If during the events of today His Royal Highness ever thought about how audacious and utterly  _stupid_ —”

"I was trying to be protective and stuff!"

"You threw me," Elsa says flatly, shooting him a withering look. "You literally picked me up, and threw me off the sled."

"Anna made me."

"Did not!"

"No one asked  _either_  of you to fight wolves for me,” Elsa says, voice sharp now. The temperature in the room abruptly takes a dip, and he watches as her hands shake, just once. She still hasn’t taken the gloves off.

Kristoff sees Anna bite her lip, opens his mouth, and then closes it again. It’s definitely not his place.

"No one asked  _you_  to push me out of the way of that arrow last week,” he says anyway.

Ringing silence.

"Or," he says, hurriedly and _not at all high pitched, nope_ —“No one asked you to do that thing when Anna fell off the roof of the palace—”

"Yeah!" Anna says, catching on, "When you jumped after me and like, flew? With your magic?"

"Or—"

"That’s  _not_  the same!” Elsa’s eyes flash and for a second Kristoff thinks that her gloves might be icing over—then the rigid line of her shoulders seems to snap in half, and she slumps down. “That’s not the same,” she repeats, dropping her head into her hands. “I’m the one who—”

"It  _is_  the same,” Anna says, quiet now. She scoots sideways, so that her shoulder can touch Elsa’s, so she can brace Elsa up. “Do you think we like it when you scar for us?”

Elsa doesn’t respond. Kristoff watches the frost on the walls grow and recede with each breath she takes, and then clears his throat. “Actually— _I_  wouldn’t mind having you catch Anna like that again—that was just awesome.”

Anna shoots him a scandalized look, but Elsa laughs—a shaky thing, but it’s there. “You two,” she says, rubbing her forehead, “You two are the most _tiresome_  people in all of Arendelle.”

"Well," he says, leaning over so he can reach Elsa’s hand, "Yeah, probably."

He starts taking her gloves off; finger by finger, left then right. She doesn’t stop him.


	9. when i'm queen (and i'm your right hand)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For ultranos, who asked for an almost diplomatic incident and got...well, crack.

Kristoff wakes up to the sound of his door slamming open. Anna flies through the threshold and in very quick succession almost kicks herself in the face, trips over a nonexistent hindrance, and falls onto the floor.

This isn’t really a surprising thing to view, but what  _is_  surprising is that instead of bouncing up like nothing’s happened she just kind of…stays on the floor, making vaguely terrified noises.

He slowly pushes himself up. “Anna? Are you…okay?”

"I’m not."

"Not okay?" He jumps off his bed immediately. What if— "What’s going on? Did—"

"No, I’m—" slowly, she raises her head. Kristoff’s chest ices over when he sees the profound misery in her eyes, but then—

"I’m not  _Anna_.”

Wait, what?

He stares dumbly as she sits up, running a hand through her hair. “We were looking over an old book—I touched something that I wasn’t supposed to, and…”

But Kristoff’s still fixating on the way that Anna—or whoever—is clasping her hands; Anna does it too, but not like this, but this way  _does_  look weirdly familiar—

He’s suddenly and  _painfully_  aware that he’s not wearing any pants.

“ _Elsa?”_

* * *

Anna, meanwhile, is panicking very methodically inside a kitchen pantry.

"It’s not that bad," she tells herself, stuffing a fistful of chocolate into her mouth, "I mean, it  _is_ that bad, but it’s not  _that that_  bad. Elsa setting off an eternal winter, that was worse—”

(Of course,  _she_ might set off an eternal winter right now, but that’s—okay, that’s not the point here, the point is that there has to be at least one thing worse than  _what is happening right now_.)

When Elsa and Kristoff finally find her, she’s standing listlessly in the middle of a small blizzard, still trying to think of something else that might be worse than her current predicament.

* * *

"Oh good," Kristoff mutters as Elsa drags him into the pantry Anna’s currently hiding in, "This isn’t going to start any rumors at all."

Elsa ignores him, too busy shivering at the sudden temperature change. Is this what people feel like all the time?

Her hand flicks up as if to dispel the winter scene in front of her. Then she remembers. “Anna!”

"I can’t  _stop_ ,” her sister wails, flapping her hands around and only making the snow worse, “I keep trying—”

Elsa winces as she hears her own vocal chords warp toward hysteria, and hurries forward to give her sister a quick hug. At least her sense of balance in Anna’s body is getting a little better, but it feels weird, being the shorter one. “No, no—it’s okay. I thought I told you stay in the library while I went and got Kristoff—”

"I meant to," Anna mumbles into her shoulder, "But then I made a snow duckling, and then it ran away. See?"

Sure enough, there’s a pure white duckling sitting placidly a few feet away.

"It’s so cute," Kristoff says, before he can stop himself.

"That doesn’t matter right now," Elsa says, ignoring him for a second time as he turns an alarming shade of puce, "Anna, I was supposed to sign a treaty with foreign emissaries fifteen minutes ago."

Her own eyes gaze back at her in horror before filling with tears. “What are we gonna do? I can’t go to that meeting as—as  _you_ , I can’t be you _,_ I can’t even stop this snow—”

"It’s  _okay_ ,” Elsa repeats, hugging her for the second time, “Getting upset only—”

She stops, shivers again. “We’ll figure it out together.”

Anna sniffs, and then gives her a watery smile. “Maybe if I do this—”

Elsa has to duck to avoid her own fist as it suddenly jabs out; moments later, a snow kitten wanders out of brand new snow drift, mewling.

Kristoff stares around at the pantry in general, and then lets out a laugh that sounds almost maniacal. “Oh,” he says, slapping his hand to his forehead, “This isn’t happening.”

* * *

Anna does manage to finally stop the blizzard—by doing a weird thing with Elsa’s hands where she stretches out with her palm up and bends her middle and ring fingers—but not before there’s practically a zoo in the pantry. After that it’s just a matter of sending her to the meeting as Elsa (against all of their better judgment) and then stealing back to the library with all the baby animals in tow, so they can figure out how to reverse what’s happened.

Or—Elsa’s doing that, Kristoff’s mostly watching the snow creatures, and.

From the desk, Elsa sighs. “No,” she says.

Kristoff ducks his head quickly, scratching the bear cub on his lap behind its ears. “I didn’t say anything.”

When he looks up again, Elsa is staring at him. “No,” she repeats.

It’s weird to see that kind of…weight in Anna’s eyes, but he makes himself meet Elsa’s gaze this time. “You haven’t even thought about it?”

"Of  _course_  I’m thinking about it.” she snaps. The book she’s holding flies across the room, and she starts to pace. “Of  _course_  I—I used to wake up in the mornings, and think that if I just—kept my eyes closed for long enough, my magic could just. Always, for years and years.”

"Elsa," Kristoff says quietly, "I didn’t mean—"

But Elsa shakes her head. “She’s my sister. My magic—I don’t care. I would  _never_. No.”

She sits down again, tries to run her hand through Anna’s hair. It doesn’t…work quite right, so she huffs and unties Anna’s pigtails. “Hand me that book.”

* * *

"—I was  _so_ embarrassed, because it wasn’t just one snow bunny, it was a whole bunch, and who’s going to take, y’know,  _The Queen_  seriously if  _rabbits_  randomly spring out of the ground during the middle of an agreement—”

"Anna," Elsa says.

"—but then the Princess of Corona—she’s great, her name’s Rapunzel and I asked her to eat with us tonight, by the way—she just kind of made this noise, like— _eeee_? Or like— _yay?_ Anyway, she started playing with them, and then everyone just kind of laughed? Even the really angry guys from Selfoss, and everyone ended up signing the treaty. Diplomatic crisis averted!”

"That’s  _brilliant_ , Anna,” Elsa says, and—yep, that’s totally pride, Anna can read her own face. “But the spell’s ready.”

She blinks. “Spell? Oh, right.”

They make their way to the space Kristoff cleared out for them, but before Anna grabs—well, her own hand. “Elsa. Are you…?”

"Don’t." Elsa doesn’t look at her.

But Anna wants to. She just—she doesn’t really  _like_  the magic, because it’s kind of inconvenient and she’d need to figure out a way to stop creating snow animals before there’s an infestation, but. It’s not…

"It’s not  _bad_ ,” she says, “Or—not for me.”

"Not yet," Elsa counters. Then she smiles, pushes a strand of hair out of her eyes. "Besides, what would Kristoff do if we  _did_ , huh?”

And Anna laughs, despite herself, and lets Elsa lead her on.

Before they sit, though, Anna reaches for Elsa’s hand again, squeezes:  _Are you sure?_

Her sister squeezes back.  _It’s okay_.

* * *

Elsa keeps her eyes closed for a while, even after she’s done everything the book’d told her to do. Lets the magic last, for a little while longer in her mind.

Then she opens them. Everything’s gone back to normal, except for the snow animals.

She smiles.

"Boy, it’s weird to be back in my body again," Anna laughs, before leaning over to help Kristoff up—

And, in the split second before she realizes  _that’s my face I’m still looking at my face_ —overbalances, and sends her own body flying.

Kristoff lets out a high-pitched groan as he slams into the nearest wall, and then promptly passes out.

Anna stares in horror at Kristoff’s massive hands.  _Her_ massive hands, now.

"Um," Elsa says, "So it’s possible that…that didn’t go quite right."


	10. at first sight of the sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For rowanwould, who prompted "list, wall, eye."

It’s probably the chilliness of the pre-dawn air that wakes her, but once she realizes that Kristoff’s not in bed anymore getting up seems to be inevitable. Grumbling under her breath about stupid ice harvesters and  _the sky’s not even awake, seriously,_ Anna rummages blearily for something to wear before chancing upon Kristoff’s giant nightshirt.

Somewhere in the castle, Elsa is probably giving her a Look, but it’s too early in the morning to care about appearances.

Finding Kristoff doesn’t take long at all. He’s sitting on the balcony, eyes half-lidded as he stares out at the inner courtyard, and completely naked.

_Definitely_  too early in the morning to care about appearances.

"I wake you?" he asks, without turning around.

"Nah," Anna says, sinking down next to him. The floor makes her shiver, and he frowns.

"Cold?"

It’s likely that he’ll never  _really_  stop worrying about it, but that he only asks instead of freaking out like he used to is a victory all on its own. “Mmm,” she says, scooting closer until she can share his warmth, “Better now, though.”

A chuckle as he wraps his arms around her; safe.

They keep silent, watching as the sun peeks out from the mountains to the east. There are times when Kristoff gets like this, when his eyes get kind of far away and there’s a strange twist to his mouth. Anna doesn’t like it at all, but she's seen it reflected often enough in Elsa’s eyes--in her own eyes--to understand.

The best way to get anything out of him when this happens is to just…wait, so she tries to keep her fidgeting to a minimum. (Old habits and all that;  _she_  still likes filling up the empty places with noise, but she doesn’t feel like she has to, anymore.)

Finally: “I can’t feel it, still.”

Anna keeps her eyes fixed on the sunrise; this will go better if he’s not constantly trying to avoid her gaze. “What’s it?”

He snorts. “Do you want a list?” he says. Moments later she feels his fingers in her hair. This too, is ritual—she used to make fun of the way his hands always and automatically reached out for something to do, but now it’s just a Kristoff thing.

(She thinks it’s amazing, the way he creates things so easily. Almost like magic.)

Anna waits, and after a while he starts again, quieter. “The castle, I guess. The titles? Prince  _Consort_ —I just. This is home now, but somehow…suddenly I feel like I’m drifting. And—”

The unfinished sentence hangs in the air. Anna closes her eyes and leans back, loves the solidity of his chest—a wall against both wind and tide, against what fates impose. It’s been months since he started living at the castle. The townspeople have been calling him the Future Prince for almost as long, no matter how much they both shouted otherwise, but still. He leaves to ice harvest, he visits the Valley of the Living Rock.

Suddenly, she understands.

Kristoff finishes her braids and casts around for something to tie her hair with, but she puts a hand on his shoulder. “You have other places to call home.”

He inhales sharply and meets her eyes, but doesn’t say anything.

"Look," Anna says, "When I first met you, I thought you were the rudest, dirtiest, scruffiest—"

"Oh,  _thanks_ ,” he says, rolling his eyes.

"No, listen." She hesitates a little, because words are still…not her thing. "But you were  _great_. Exactly who I needed, after—after everything. Prince Kristoff isn’t the guy who catches me when I fall off of cliffs, or the guy who’d run across a blizzard for me, or the guy—”

She stops, relishes it. “Or the guy I fell in love with.”  _True love, true love_ , sing the old stories, but she doesn’t need any of them.

Kristoff still blushes, even after all this time. “I—”

"But Prince Kristoff doesn’t have to be…someone different, either. You don’t have to make Kristoff-who-lived-with-trolls a  _lie_ , just because—and I don’t want you to. Not for me. You can still go out on your trips when you want. What’s going to happen—it’s not  _goodbye_. Not forever. Not unless you want it to be.”

He stares at her for so long that she starts to turn red, because it’s obvious that she hasn’t explained anything at  _all_ , but then he laughs, softly. “When did you get so smart, huh?”

"Hey!" She reaches out to slap him lightly on the arm. "I was  _always_  this amazing, don’t you forget it.”

"Never," he says; a promise. Anna feels the familiar and warm pull somewhere deep, and finally turns around completely.

Their kisses always taste like something green, with a vague tingle to it that reminds her of woodsmoke—like summer.

"We’re getting married in three days," he whispers to her during a break; voice threaded with exhilaration, with warmth.

"We are," Anna says, feeling like her smile could eclipse the sun, "We  _are_.”


	11. here for us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Rachel, who prompted "knife, tea, clouds."

A choked-off scream jerks Kristoff awake. In the darkness, he feels Anna’s hand scrabbling over his chest, reaching, reaching. “Elsa?” she says, eyes alight with terror, “ _Elsa_ _?”_

"I’m here," Elsa says from his other side, "I’m here, it’s alright."

Anna’s breath is coming out in small gasps as Kristoff gives her a boost over and into her sister’s arms. “Elsa,” she sobs, chest heaving, “You were gone—you  _can’t_ —”

"It’s okay," Elsa murmurs again as Anna cries that it isn’t, it isn’t, shakes apart.

The three of them don’t usually sleep in the same room—that’d be awkward no matter what Anna says and  _rumors, seriously_ —but sometimes it just happens. Sometimes the two of them have a sleepover and decide to drag him along, and sometimes it’s something else; today Elsa had stumbled to Anna’s door at two in morning still in her work clothes, mumbled something incoherent about snowmen before faceplanting, and that’d kind of…decided it.

Kristoff’s glad that it happened, now.

Elsa keeps holding Anna; strokes her hair in slow, methodical movements; he puts a hand on the small of Anna’s back, breathes a steady stream of nonsense into her ear. Every language he knows, all the way down to the few Troll words he’s picked up, all the way down to what he remembers of the warm, song-like language from his childhood. All the way down, anchoring her back to them.

Eventually, Anna’s sobs subside and she drifts off to sleep again, her hand still a claw around Elsa’s wrist.

A short silence as he lets himself uncoil a little, and then he sits up. “Chess?”

There’s something almost knife-like in Elsa’s smile as she gently extricates herself from Anna’s grip. “Yeah, let’s.”

* * *

After losing four games in a row he goes back to sleep, and dreams a confusing mess of night rides, open doors and closed doors, freezing rooms and frozen girls, propelling himself forward so he can get there in time, but he can never,  _never_ —

When he wakes with sharp pant, though, it’s not to a blizzard but to sunlight streaming through the windows. Not a cloud in the sky, and Anna, snoring in his arms.

The relief is so overwhelming that for a second he doesn’t notice Elsa bending over them. “Hmm?”

She hushes him, smiling strangely. He frowns at the teacup in her hands; Anna doesn’t drink tea in the morning, neither does he—are those  _ice cubes_?

Dazed, he watches as she very carefully upends the cup of frozen tea onto the back of Anna’s exposed neck, closes his eyes again because this  _has_  to be a hallucination—

Anna lets out a furious shriek as she starts awake, accidentally elbowing Kristoff in the ribs as she tries to get the cold off and grab her sister at the same time, but Elsa’s already gone.

The previously quiet castle erupts with crashes, bangs, and triumphant laughter. Kristoff groans, cramming a pillow over his face. More sleep, he decides. More sleep would be good.


	12. for all my big mistakes

The chest is open. She lifts a shaking hand—to close the lid, but it falls instead on the gloves.

_It’s different now,_ she tells herself,  _you don’t have to—one bad night, it doesn’t change anything. It’s different now_.

But her hand stays where it is, and her head echoes: the metallic scrape of a sword,  _Elsa?_

The stillness, after.

_Different now,_  she tells herself again, but her hand might as well be frozen there in the chest, the last safe place—

The bedroom door slams open. “Elsa!” Anna says. Breathless and alive. “Elsa, Kristoff brought—trolls—crashed into the—come on, come on!”

Her sister pulls her out into the hall, and Elsa rolls her eyes, and complains about paperwork, and  _what have you broken now?_

And her hands are bare.


	13. every vessel pitching hard to starboard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A crossover with Doctor Who, this time.

There’s nothing for her to do, so she just sits, and doesn’t fidget, and counts the number of times Elsa flexes her gloved hand.

_Forty. Forty-one_.

"Anything you need," her sister says, for the fifth time that morning. _Forty-two._

There are lines around Elsa’s eyes that didn’t exist before ( _forty-three),_ and Anna’s…Anna’d try to cheer her up, but she’s not feeling so great either.

_Forty-four_.

A clattering noise from the blue box in front of them, and the man who calls himself  _Doctor_ ducks out from behind a…something. “Hm? Oh, yes. The cooling  _really_ helped, I’m trying to re-establish the connection to the—‘course the chameleon circuit’s never worked properly…”

He trails off at the look on their faces. “It’ll be fixed soon, and I’ll be gone,” he says, gentler now. Understanding.

Anna tries on a smile ( _forty-five_ ), but looking at the Doctor hurts in a way that she can’t describe.  _Forty-six._ She remembers how he’d stumbled out of his blue box three days ago, the look on his face as he’d tried to explain how his machine managed to drop out of the sky and how she’d heard the words  _time travel_ and her mind had just…stopped.

_Forty-seven_ ; she remembers how Elsa’d shut herself in her room the first day, to stop herself— _forty-eight_ —how Anna’d found her smelling of frost— _forty-nine_ —how they’d held each other whispering _we can’t, we can’t_.

_Fifty._ Anna closes her eyes. She can’t hate the man who dropped from the sky, or she  _can_ , probably, but that wouldn’t be fair. She just…

She wants him gone. As far away as possible, as soon as possible, so she can get back to—living, instead of wondering; wondering if Elsa did something to the machine with her magic maybe they could go back to before and just fix something,  _anything_ —Mama and Papa or Hans or that night in the Great Hall—

_We can’t. We can’t._

"Please," she hears Elsa say, and even though her eyes are still closed Anna counts:  _fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three._ “Anything you need.”


	14. that these things take forever (i especially am slow)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by ProfessorSpork's just this heart with much too much to share.

Kristoff wakes to the sound of distinctly male laughter, and before he’s opened his eyes, he’s imagined fists and icy water and  _people will beat you and curse you and cheat you_

What he sees when he  _does_  open them are Eugene and Rapunzel. “Good morning,” Rapunzel whispers to him, giggling before leaning over and—

He still has no idea what’s going on, but moans into the kiss anyway because  _wow, good morning is right_.

"Kristoff?" asks a sleepy voice from his—lap? He looks down to meet Anna’s eyes. "Wha’ happened?"

He frowns, looking around; they’re on the massive sofa in Anna’s room, there are overturned bottles on the floor, some clothes…

"Not my tiara," mutters someone leaning against his shoulder—wait, what?

"Oh my gosh, that’s so  _cute_ ,” Rapunzel gushes, beaming. “Elsa talks in her sleep!”

"Yeah, I guess," Anna says, but Kristoff’s still stuck on the fact that Elsa’s, you know,  _here_  when last night they probably—

The important thing, he thinks, is not to look terrified.

"Threw that ‘way," Elsa mumbles, apparently still asleep, "G’ask Marshmallow."

"She used to, back when we slept in the same room?" Anna says, answering the question no one asked. "I didn’t know she still."

Eugene chooses to swoop in that second, running a hand up Anna’s thigh and doing this over the top Flynn Rider eyebrow thing that makes her laugh and makes Kristoff want to roll his eyes and join in at the same time, except that his mind is now plowing onto even scarier scenarios, because Elsa doesn’t even like men, so what—

But bits and pieces of last night are finally starting to float in: music, and laughter, and Elsa drinking them all under the table, and…

"We just talked," he says, feeling stupidly proud. And—relieved, obviously. “We stayed up talking.”

"We know, we were there," Eugene snorts, and reaches out to tickle his chin.

Kristoff makes a half-hearted move to bat him away, but doesn’t get very far because…well, Elsa’s still sleeping on his shoulder, and he doesn’t want Anna to fall off his lap. ”How come you guys woke up so cheerful?”

Rapunzel giggles again, snuggling into his other side with Eugene. “We never slept.”

"You can have my orb," Elsa mumbles.

"Oh, good," Kristoff says. He leans back again, feeling the warmth of everyone around him, and idly tangles his hand in Anna’s hair.

It’s a very long time before any of them tries to move again.


	15. just so he can match your eyes

_sydani: From the language of the nomadic travelers of the north, meaning_ **_heart_ ** _, or_ **_core_ ** _. Can be used as an endearment for friends, companions…_

Anna stops reading.

Kristoff does this thing, when she has nightmares, where he wraps her up with those massive arms and just…talks to her, in what seems like every language in the world. She doesn’t know where he learned them all and she doesn’t know how he figured out that this is exactly what she needs—a voice in the silence, something to cling to—but it’s nice, anyway.

The Problem is that one night when he’s dragging her out of one he calls her  _sydani_  in that rolling language that she hadn’t realized was her favorite until he switched and she missed it, and the word kind of gets stuck in her head.

Grand Pabbie’d told her that it means  _mushroom_  in the language of the trolls and it means  _shovel_  in some other dialects and asking Elsa had been no help at all because her sister had just given her a Look and told her to ask Kristoff and doesn’t Elsa know that that’s  _cheating,_ jeez and she’d just been about to give it up as a lost cause—maybe Kristoff had actually called her  _sardine_ , who knows—when she spots a stray note on one of those massive dictionaries no one ever reads, and now.

_sydani: meaning_ ** _heart_** _,or_   ** _core_** _._

And now there’s a  _fuzzy_  feeling in her chest, and it’s weird— _good_ weird, duh, but also like maybe she should go see a doctor? She’s pretty sure fuzziness isn’t supposed to happen in the chest area.

"Anna?"

It’s Kristoff, of  _course_  it’s—she forces the book under a shelf before realizing that, well. She’s being stupid, because there’s nothing technically  _wrong_ , he’d just.

Called her  _heart_ ,that’s all.

(Her chest does that fuzzy thing again.)

Anna nods to herself; right, time to Face Facts. There’s probably a rational, reasonable way to react to this kind of thing—the thing where your boyfriend calls you his  _heart_ , who  _does_  that, seriously—

"There you are," Kristoff says. And there he is, ducking his head a little under the library’s low ceiling, a piece of straw stuck in his hair.

Anna takes a deep breath. Calm, rational; she can do this.

"Let’s get married," she says.


	16. the long way home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, inspired by just this heart 'verse.

The second time Eugene and Anna crash through the wall in Elsa’s study goes slightly better than the first; Rapunzel does knock over one of Elsa’s bishops with the queen in her hand by accident, but at least no paintings are ruined.

"Again?" she asks.

"That door just won’t  _budge_ ,” Anna whines, a mess of tangled limbs as she scrambles up and makes her way to their table “Hey, chess! That’s fun.”

Elsa swats her sister away as she leans forward to grab a pawn. “Rapunzel follows the rules,” she says, and then, at Rapunzel’s questioning look: “We played last week. I was winning, so she invented a political crisis and threw the board down the balcony while I was away.”

"And then I won!" Anna says, cheerfully.

"And then you damaged a priceless heirloom," Elsa corrects, scanning the board as Rapunzel moves her rook back two spaces. "How much longer do you plan on doing this, anyway?"

"Until we map out the  _whole_  thing,” Anna says, throwing herself onto a nearby armchair. Said easily enough now, but still; Rapunzel remembers the day they discovered the trapdoor under the south wing office—the way Anna’s freckles had suddenly stood stark against her pale skin as she realized that there might have been a way out all along—

Rapunzel swallows, remembering how she herself had shrunk back from the darkness, for an instant. Anna’d ignored all of their protests and thrown herself down into the hidden passage that day, and Eugene had followed her, because…

She looks at him now, sprawled out carelessly on the floor in a way that makes it really hard to concentrate on the lost cause that is her king’s side knight. ”Find anything?”

"Nope," he tells her, but slight rasp in his voice and the way his hand strays to his ribs tell her that he means  _not yet._

If Eugene Fitzherbert and Flynn Rider have anything in common, it’s that neither of them are ever  _exactly_  sure when a place is safe, and this uncharted place had thrown him off, too. That’s—okay, Rapunzel thinks, hand darting up toward her hair; they all know about old habits.

Anna, meanwhile, has gone back to The Door Problem. “It’s the only way we can get to the other side of…whatever, and we’ve tried  _everything_. The machine Rolf gave us didn’t work right—”

"She dropped it," Rapunzel tells Elsa in an undertone.

"—and some people won’t even  _help_  even though they probably  _could_ —”

"I’m not going to ‘magic’ your door," Elsa says flatly, "I still have no idea what that even means."

"—so it’s just there  _mocking_  us.”

A pout. Rapunzel most definitely doesn’t giggle, and then clears her throat. “Have you thought about waiting until Kristoff comes back from his ice harvesting trip?”

There’s a pause, then Eugene says, very quietly: “Ah.”

"Ah," Anna echoes, bouncing up. "Ah! Why didn’t you—"

"Why didn’t  _you,_ he’s  _your_ —”

"I bet he—"

"Of course he can, have you  _seen_  his shoulders—”

"I don’t know if he’d—"

"If we make him hunch over—"

And there are definitely people in the world, Rapunzel thinks, who can finish each other’s sentences, but Eugene and Anna seem to have bypassed that stage entirely.

"Right," Eugene finally says, pushing himself up, "Our heroics can continue another day, then."

"Exercises in stupidity, more like." Elsa says, out of the corner of her mouth.

“ _Nuance_ ,” Eugene and Anna say in unison, and grin.

Rapunzel just laughs.


	17. to the hour of our glory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crossover with Brave.

Raise, set, draw;  _breathe,_  and the air settles deep inside her diaphragm, pulls her in.

"So you can do it?"

A curious face appears in her periphery, haloed by the setting sun, and it takes Merida an _incredible_ amount of effort not to hurl her bow at Anna. “ _Yes_ ,” she says instead, for the third time. “ _Yes,_ if you’d let me concentrate.”

"Okay! Sorry."

She sighs, refocuses. The breeze is picking up, she’s going to need to hurry. Raise, set, draw—

Archery comes from the breath; it’s the first thing she ever learned, and it’s the first thing that people tend to forget. Anchor, hold;  _there is no beginning._ The world closes and opens, and—

She stops, and then stops again.

And then, because she can: “Och, stop  _breathing_.”

An indignant squawk from somewhere behind her. “ _What_?”

"Do it more quietly, then."

Mutinous silence. Merida smiles; she’d be lying if she said that she wasn’t doing this a tiny bit on purpose. Another breath. The world closes, opens, and—

Release. “There,” she says, feeling almost detached now as she watches her projectile hit home.

She imagines that there’d probably be a sound—a  _splat_ , maybe—but their scaffold is too far from the courtyard, and any sound is drowned out by the—

“ _MERIDA!_ ”

"You were right," Merida says, placid. "Tomato is a good look on your sister.”

Anna beams at her, previous anger forgotten. “Isn’t it, though?”


	18. coming down to earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anon on tumblr, who prompted "crown, coin, castle" and got yet another fic set in just this heart 'verse.

It takes them until mid-afternoon to find a good spot. Anna—being Anna—had kept on insisting that the right place was  _just over there_ , and they’d followed her, because—well.

In the end Eugene had simply thrown himself onto a patch of grass beside the pond and refused to move. Anna’d pouted and then tried to pick him up, but luckily Rapunzel had discovered the  _perfect_ flower up a tree, and now here they are.

Eugene chuckles as Kristoff’s hands instantly reach out for something to do. “Where’d you learn to make flower crowns?”

He expects mumbling, and maybe a blush, but Kristoff just shrugs. “There were flowers in the valley, and I used to make stuff to play with—crowns, dolls? Never really stopped, I guess.”

"No toys," Eugene says, mouth twisting; sometimes it still amazes him, how easily they’ve all kind of…forgotten. "You could have stolen some, y’know."

Kristoff snorts. “You would have been a terrible ice harvester,  _y’know_.”

"Excuse me, Flynn Rider is good at everything."

"Oh, of course," and Eugene’s just about to do something drastic like—he doesn’t know, shove Kristoff in to the water or throw some grass?—when Kristoff flicks the crown on his head. "There. For the fairest."

"You’re damn right," he grumbles, before a frustrated squeal distracts both of them.

"You can’t do it like that," Rapunzel is telling Anna, whose strategy for conquering the tree in front of her seems to be to repeatedly launch herself at it and then cling to it with all four limbs. "You have to…"

She makes a vague kind of upward flick, and then just clambers up the nearest branch. “Come on! I’ll pull you up.”

"Money on who falls off first?" Eugene asks.

Kristoff frowns, eyes flickering from the girls to where the flower is. “Both at the same time.”

"Oh, come on, that’s cheating."

"Both."

“ _Fine_ , then. But there’s no way Rapunzel’s going to fall, I’m the one who taught her how to climb—”

There’s a triumphant yell, and a hand sticks out of the foliage, clutching a flower. A second later, Anna’s face emerges as well. “I got it!  _Oooh_ , you can see the castle from up here, come look come look—”

The leaves shuffle a little, and Rapunzel’s head pokes out. “Oh!”

Anna nods, enthusiastically. “Right? Look at the way the light hits…”

She waves at the grass below, slips, and—

"That’s not fair," Eugene complains as Rapunzel catches Anna’s hand  _just_ in time and gets pulled down as well. “That’s _cheating_.”

He throws a coin at Kristoff anyway.


	19. and all shall fade (the flowers of spring)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For probablefox on tumblr, who prompted "summer rain."

It’s the kind of bright day that practically drags you outside by the arm: clear blue sky, picturesque clouds, the sun shining down on the grass. In a clearing a rabbit emerges from the undergrowth, spots a particularly delicious flower, and—

"Hey!"

Scamper. Seconds later, Anna charges up the slopes, hurling a rock that, had the rabbit still been there, would have missed it entirely. “That’s right, get away from that—”

She stops in her tracks, staring at the ruined remains of the crocus. “Oh.”

"Well, that’s just  _great_ ,” she huffs, throwing herself down onto the grass. “I came all the way here…”

It’s been  _that_  kind of day. She’d woken up in a funk, and the fact that Elsa hadn’t been at breakfast hadn’t helped at all; Kristoff had tried his best—offered a ride on his sled and everything—but Anna just…hadn’t been in the mood, and then he left too, so she’d gone to look for crocuses by herself, and now…

The sun chooses that moment to burn even hotter, like it’s making fun of her on purpose or something. Anna glares up: at the sky, at the sun, at the massive tombstones to her left. She’d saved this place for last, in hopes that there would be at least one left, and that’d been stupid, and  _she’d_  been stupid.

The crocuses are over. She should’ve known.

All of a sudden her eyes prickle, and she can’t stop her dumb tears from spilling down her dumb face and everything is so so  _unfair_ —unfair that rabbit had come and ruined the last crocus right in front of her, unfair that Elsa hadn’t been at breakfast  _today of all days, seriously_ , unfair that today should be so nice when three years ago, three years ago it’d rained and stormed, unfair that Mama and Papa had to go to that stupid wedding in that stupid ship and then, and then—

Anna digs her fingers deep into the ground, and pulls up tufts of grass, but the tears keep coming. Unfair, unfair that Mama and Papa had died as summer was ending, when crocuses fade; unfair that Anna can’t find a single thing to give them and instead is just sitting here crying like a—a baby.

_Can’t I be a grown up? Can’t I…_

There’s a quiet rustle from behind, and Anna feels the temperature dip, just a little. “I thought I’d find you here.”

She stares down at the grass as Elsa sink down next to her.  _Why weren’t_ ** _you_** _here_ is right on the tip of her tongue, but she swallows it back—she’s not  _mad_  at Elsa, exactly, she’s just.

It’s just  _that_ kind of day, that’s all, and Elsa hadn’t been at breakfast.

"They should have told me," she says instead, and that’s—probably not a better thing to say, judging from the sharp way that Elsa inhales, but well, too late now. "Or, or—they shouldn’t have  _not_.”

"Anna, they couldn’t have known—"

"Well, they should have!" Anna says, louder now. She still doesn’t look at her sister. "Known. They’re parents, they should’ve known what would happen. Good— _good_  parents wouldn’t have tried to keep secrets, or would have cared enough to at least tell me, or they wouldn’t have shut you away in the first place—”

“ _Anna_ ,” Elsa says. There’s a sudden harshness in her voice that makes Anna flinch, and she waits, but Elsa doesn’t say anything after that, just stays perfectly, perfectly still.

"They shouldn’t have  _left._ " And the words hurt coming out of her mouth, like—swallowing ice cubes or something, and she’s still  _so_  bad at metaphors, but it’s better than not having anything at all. “They shouldn’t have—”

"Anna," her sister says again, and Anna finally looks up to see Elsa bite down on her lip before— _whoa_ , she doesn’t think Elsa’s ever started a hug before, not like this; not even on that first day, after the thaw. “You’re right, they shouldn’t have. They should have known better. You’re  _right_.”

"How come you’re  _okay_  with that?” Anna demands. She’s—she’s crying again, and probably getting snot all over Elsa’s clothes. “How come you’re so calm?”

She feels Elsa’s breath hitch a little, at that. “I’m not. I’m…”

It takes her so long to speak again that Anna almost starts to worry. “For a long time, I thought…I don’t know. I thought that if I’d practiced leaving—you, Mama and Papa, anyone—that everyone would be better off, and that I’d—get used to it, somehow. And if things somehow weren’t better, then I wasn’t doing it correctly, but that’s—that’s all wrong. You taught me…you have to run  _to_ things, to help them at all. And, well. If you see some bad parts, and that hurts, then that’s…that’s alright, I think. Mama and Papa should’ve—known better, but. They didn’t, and we’re still here. I got  _you_  back, and I never thought that I would.”

Anna sniffs. “Well, that was stupid of you.”

Even with her head buried in Elsa’s shoulder, she can picture the way her sister’s face must look now—a patchwork of resigned/amused/content. (There, that metaphor hadn’t been so bad.) “I know, I know.”

They sit in silence for a while, and then Anna says, quietly: “All the crocuses are gone.”

"They’ll come back," Elsa replies, tapping her bare fingers absently against Anna’s side. "They always do, in the spring, and—some of them come back in the fall, too. We can look for those in a couple of weeks. But now…"

Anna’s stomach grumbles, right on cue. “Lunch,” she agrees, reluctantly scooting back and hastily swiping at her eyes. “Oh, I’m a mess. I’m—”

"Hey, none of that," Elsa says, grabbing her hand and pulling her up, "It’s just…it’s a bad day for rain, that’s all."

They make their way back to the castle, Elsa’s arm around Anna’s shoulder, Anna’s arm around Elsa’s back, and the sun shines, bright against the grass.

 


End file.
